What Apple’s expansion may mean for the San Diego region

U-T

Rows of headphones on display along "the Avenue" during the 2017 opening of the new Apple Store UTC in San Diego. Apple is going to add 1,000 workers in San Diego over the next three years and may rent an office building in the University Town Center area, according to reports.

Rows of headphones on display along "the Avenue" during the 2017 opening of the new Apple Store UTC in San Diego. Apple is going to add 1,000 workers in San Diego over the next three years and may rent an office building in the University Town Center area, according to reports. (U-T)

Thursday’s announcement that Apple plans to add 1,000 workers in San Diego over the next three years is welcome news for the region. Combined with Google leasing a 60,000-square-foot office here in 2016 and Amazon launching a 107,000-square-foot campus in 2017, this amounts to further confirmation from the tech giants of the world that San Diego is deeply attractive to employers, thanks to its outstanding work force and great quality of life.

Analysts saw the move as part of Apple’s larger strategy of seeking to design more of the components used in its iPhones and other electronics. The company is sure to get plenty of résumés from the 1,500 local employees that Qualcomm has had to lay off this year, partly because Apple no longer buys cellular modems from the local tech giant. Here’s hoping the two companies’ contentious relationship — reflected in legal wars over patents and more — doesn’t divide the local tech community. For example, UC San Diego’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering has a close relationship with Qualcomm. That shouldn’t get in the way of the department also working closely with Apple.

While the moves that Apple announced included expansions much bigger than what’s planned for San Diego, there’s an interesting intrastate angle to the Cupertino-based company’s maneuvering. That’s the chance that it may foreshadow a brain drain of talent from extremely expensive Silicon Valley to merely super expensive San Diego County.

In June, the Bay Area News Group reported on a stunning poll showing that 46 percent of the region’s residents were likely to move from the region in coming years, primarily because of concerns that housing costs were hurting their quality of life. That’s up from 34 percent in 2016. The article featured Berkeley software engineer Travis Dobbs, who said he and his also well-paid wife had no hopes of being able to afford a home.

Hey, Dobbs family, come on down! You’ll find that your family’s income goes at lot further in Poway than Palo Alto. When more Silicon Valley tech workers figure this out, San Diego’s work force could get stronger — and its economic outlook even brighter.